Tips for Streaming Media

Tips for Gaming

Tips for Streaming Media

Netflix
1. Navigate to Your Account>Your Profile>Playback settings.
2. Select the quality you want.
3. It can take up to eight hours for changes to take place.

Amazon Fire TV
1. On your Fire TV remote, hold back, reverse, right, and select simultaneously for 10 seconds.
2. It will open the Display settings. Once in Display settings, select Video Resolution and select the video resolution you would like to use.

YouTube
1. You can adjust the video quality of any video you are watching by clicking the settings wheel in the bottom right hand corner of the and you can freely change the stream quality there.

Apple TV
1. From the main iTunes menu, choose Settings> iTunes Store.
2. Select Video Resolution and switch 1080p HD or 720p HD to Standard Definition.

Roku
1. From your Roku home menu, hit:
– Home key 5x
– Rewind 3x
– Fast Forward 3x
2. This will open a secret menu.
3. Select the lowest bitrate.
4. If you want to have a higher quality, go back and select the bitrate one higher than your current. Keep doing this until you have the quality you want.

Sling TV
1. From the Sling TV start, go to Settings > Connection or Settings > Bandwidth Limiting.
2. Select how much bandwidth you want to cut back on by selecting High, Medium, or Low quality. You can also see how much bandwidth you are currently using.

Hulu
1. Click on the gear icon.
2. Select the video quality you would like from the “quality” section.

Tips For Rural Gaming

Console Gaming

Console Gaming (Playstation, XBox, Wii, etc), can be a tremendous strain on metered data, but there are a few key things you can do to limit data strain.

1. ALWAYS buy disk capable consoles and get your games on disks. Modern and next gen consoles are now coming out with cheaper “Stream” or “Lite” versions that do not have a disk drive. These are not a good ideal for rural metered bandwidth connections.

2. In combination with item 1, ALWAYS get your games via disk. Most modern games will all have a “Zero Day” patch as well. So even when you buy a game on disk and install from the disk. You will likely have an update still, that can sometimes be dozens of gigs as well.

3. Like with streaming media, you can modify the resolution of your gaming. If you are doing online play, this can greatly reduce your data usage. If you are playing single player games not streaming with other players, it should be less impactful on your data usage.

4. Some modern AAA titles can be 100-300GB of data in total, so this affirms that you will want to operate off of disk and then supplement with post install updates.

5. If ever possible, you may want to consider bringing your console to a friends house who may let you use their broadband connection (Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, Cox, etc…)

PC Gaming

1. When PC gaming, when at all possibly procure games via disk.

2. Many modern game titles are released exclusively through stream platforms (Steam, Origin, GOG, Epic, etc…). While PC Games are traditionally more optimized that console, modern AAA games can still be over 100GB of data.

3. When possible, you may want to bring your device to a friends home on a broadband connection (Comcast, Spectrum, AT&T, Cox, etc…). If this is not possible, you may be able to download the game files to an external drive or USB drive as a friends and install later locally.